Identity Politics

I mentioned — in my post about Trump (“Curb your Hysteria” – see below) — that I know some real chattering-class types who are convinced his victory was not only something maleficent — a rejection of their brilliant, tolerant ideas — but the “last gasp” of the bad people among us (i.e., people who don’t think like them), to boot. Further, they seem convinced that it’s only a question of a generation passing before they will be in power again. They are, I think, projecting their own rigidity and lack of self-awareness onto everyone else. They assume that, because their world view has never changed, no one else’s will either. (Some of us do learn and grow in this life, however slowly and painfully.) This is where they are insanely, embarrassingly wrong.

A convenient liberal interpretation of the recent presidential election would have it that Mr. Trump won in large part because he managed to transform economic disadvantage into racial rage — the “whitelash” thesis. This is convenient because it sanctions a conviction of moral superiority and allows liberals to ignore what those voters said were their overriding concerns. It also encourages the fantasy that the Republican right is doomed to demographic extinction in the long run — which means liberals have only to wait for the country to fall into their laps. The surprisingly high percentage of the Latino vote that went to Mr. Trump should remind us that the longer ethnic groups are here in this country, the more politically diverse they become.